My brother lighted his pipe, and leaned back in his chair, and looked
at me. I looked at him very, very hard. Then we both began to blow
clouds of smoke in each other's faces. Hardly a word had Tim and I
passed since that day in the field when I drew the long twig that sent
me away and left him behind to keep our home. What a blessing a pipe
is at a time like this! Tim says more by the vigor of his smoking than
Perry Thomas could express in a year's oration. So we enshrouded our
emotions in the gray cloud; but if he did not speak, I knew well what
he would be saying, and the harder I puffed the easier did he divine
what was uppermost in my mind. For we were brothers! This was the
same room that for years had been our world; this the same carpet over
which we had tumbled together at our mother's feet. There was the same
cupboard that had been our mountain; here the same chairs that formed
our ridges and our valleys. At the table by my side, by the light of
this very lamp, we sat together not so very long ago, boys, spelling
out with our father, letter by letter, word by word, the stories of the
Bible. Here we had lived our little lives; here we were to live what
was to come; and where life is as simple as it is with us we grow a bit
like the animals about us. We sit together and smoke; we purr, as it
were, and know each other's mind. Tim and I purred. Incident by
incident, year by year, we travelled down the course of our lives
again, over the rough ways, over the smooth ways, smoking and smoking,
until at last we brought up together at the present. Not a word had
either of us spoken, but at last when our reminiscent wanderings were
over and we paused on the threshold of the future, Tim spoke.

"Attractive?" he said in a tone of inquiry.

He was looking at me with eyebrows arched, curiously, and there was a